


negative capability

by smileymikey



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23805538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smileymikey/pseuds/smileymikey
Summary: If Adam were poetic, he and Ronan would be spinning planets, constantly drawn together by gravity and the sheer power of the universe, sometimes aligning so they would be both at the furthest points of their orbits at the same time with millions of miles of emptiness and dust between them, but sometimes aligning so they would be at the other edge of their orbits, hovering inches away from one another, the dust between ionised and pulsing with tension.But he’s not. So they’re just assholes.or, Adam and Ronan learn that love can be soft.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 19
Kudos: 198





	negative capability

Negative capability: the capacity of the greatest writers (particularly Shakespeare) to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty.

* * *

In the darkness of their small room, Adam abruptly says, halting, “Sometimes, I have—days.”

They’re pressed so close together Adam hears rather than sees Ronan look over at him. If Adam rolled his head over they would be nose-to-nose: Ronan would be all he could see in his line of vision, just wide, sharp eyes, and a wider, sharper mouth under it. The window is half-open, and the moonlight through it pulls strange shadows across Ronan’s face. Something deep inside Adam, something prideful and primal and just a little bit arrogant, revels in this. No one else gets to see him like this, angular and pale and dappled with silvery light, loose-limbed and scowling and half-asleep. This is for Adam only.

He can feel Ronan’s shift, when he senses the gravity of what Adam says. They only talk like this here: the two of them, curled in one bed, the room so dark it could stretch out for miles, pieces of Ronan’s head on shelves and pinned to walls. Here, they talk without consequence. Persephone calls this time of the night the witching hour. Adam thinks it’s appropriate. It doesn’t feel real, in the morning. Like it exists in a vacuum, split between Ronan’s bed at the Barnes and Adam’s shabby single above St. Agnes, and it closes when they’ve said what they’ve needed to

Sometimes the lights are on. Most of the time they’re off. They’re off now. It’s easier, that way.

Ronan is getting used to this, Adam knows. Ronan finds it easier with the lights on. When the lights are off he wrangles dream-beasts and swims in blood. It’s compromise. That’s what you do for people you love.

Ronan says anyway: “No shit.”

Compromise is sleeping with the lights off. Compromise is knowing _no shit_ means _I love you. I’ll be here for you._

Adam knows. He’s Adam.

“I’ll be okay,” he says. “I just wanted you to know.”

And Ronan knows. He’s Ronan.

“Go to sleep,” Ronan says. As if an afterthought: “Dick.”

Adam closes his eyes, but he smiles anyway. He can feel Ronan bare his teeth against his neck.

* * *

If Adam were poetic, he and Ronan would be spinning planets, constantly drawn together by gravity and the sheer power of the universe, sometimes aligning so they would be both at the furthest points of their orbits at the same time with millions of miles of emptiness and dust between them, but sometimes aligning so they would be at the edges of their orbits, hovering inches away from one another, the dust between ionised and pulsing with tension.

But he’s not. So they’re just assholes.

They’ve had to learn how to be better, for each other. Near death does turn you into a piece of shit, and neither needed much convincing, either. There are moments when Adam is a dick and Ronan is one too and they both scrape and scrape until they explode and leave behind in their wake something destructive and ugly, something still smouldering, and because they’re both still clawing their way out of Cabeswater and the Henrietta trailer park and Niall Lynch’s chalk outline and Gansey is usually their benchmark for sensibility, they ignore it until it goes away.

But they’re trying. Ronan’s bed is becoming their drawing board. When the lights are off and Ronan’s face is webbed with starlight and his eyelashes stretch long dark lines across his cheeks and Adam feels brave enough to press their knees together under the comforter and outside the window the witching hour crawls on, the world shrinks to the size of the Barns and for an hour nothing exists but them.

Adam feels stripped naked, here, exposed. He sometimes feels like someone has cracked his chest open and is unfolding his ribs one by one, slowly revealing his fleshy, vulnerable heart. It was hard, at the beginning, to let someone be there to see.

But this is Ronan. Ronan, who has callouses on his shoulder from his raven and his palms from heavy summer nights drag racing. Ronan, who is fiercely and ardently protective of those he cares for.

Adam is safe, with him.

Sometimes they slip up, though. One day it rains and rains. Adam has just reached the Barns in his Hondayota when it starts, and hours later, when they’ve eaten dinner – eggs, from the dream-hens, and beans, from the store down the road – and they’re sat surrounded by the smudge of dusk, on the wheezy couch in the living room, Adam on one end, reading over his latest assignment, and Ronan at the other, scowling at the ceiling, in that way he can do for what feels like an age without moving, it’s still going, hitting the roof like rocks. If Adam closes his eyes hard enough it almost sounds like whispering. He could lose himself in the rain, he thinks, if he let himself.

Adam doesn’t know how long he’s reading for, but he’s pulled out of his thoughts when he feels Ronan shift from across the couch. He glances up, sees him blink hard, a few times, probably for the first time in about five minutes. Adam thinks he’s training himself to keep his eyes open longest, no doubt to be able to challenge Blue to a staring contest and be confident he can win. So he blinks, and then contorts his body, like a panther, and says, “Fuckin’ rain.” It’s the first thing either of them have said in around an hour.

“It’s nice,” Adam says, to provoke him.

Predictably, Ronan says, “As balls,” and then, “The corn is gonna drown.” Ronan takes strange pride in the corn crops he has managed to dredge up behind one of the barns. So far he’s only been able to grow wizened shrubs, but Adam thinks he likes the challenge of doing something by himself: no dream magic, just himself and the unbalanced pH of the soil. (It’s been a persisting issue.)

“We’ll get the wheelbarrow out tomorrow,” Adam says. “It’ll survive.”

“ _It’ll survive_ ,” Ronan mocks, and then he stretches again, arching his body, anchored at the top of his spine where the top of his tattoo curls out and grasps for his nape. As he does so, his long legs stretch out to where Adam is sat, and his feet, long and pale, with toes he could probably use to hang from trees, hover over Adam’s lap, like he’s about to drop them in – and before Adam can even think, before he can even properly process just how little he would mind, how much he would _like_ it, every muscle in his body seizes like he’s been struck with electricity and he flinches backwards so suddenly his textbook goes clattering to the floor.

For a few moments, there is silence. Over the roar of blood in his ears, he can hear his heart pound. He stares at the textbook on the floor, eyes wide.

And then Ronan shifts, and Adam looks up, and he’s folding his legs back towards him like it had been what he was doing all along. Without even batting an eyelid, he says, “You’ll have to borrow Declan’s rain boots, Matthew’s won’t fit,” like nothing has happened, and then, “Is that due in tomorrow?”

But something has changed in his eyes. He doesn’t touch Adam for the rest of the evening.

* * *

Adam isn’t surprised when Ronan says, later, in bed, “You don’t like it when I touch you.”

He doesn’t say it like an accusation, or a question. It’s something in between, something uncharged, without expectation, but with enough weight that Adam knows Ronan wants it to be answered.

Still, Adam says, “That’s... not true.”

“You don’t like it,” Ronan says stoutly.

Adam looks over at him. Ronan looks almost upset.

“I’m sorry,” he says automatically.

“You didn’t say anything,” Ronan says. “ _Fuck_ , Adam.”

“I do like it,” Adam says. Ronan scoffs. Adam insists, “No, I do, really,” and in a moment of bravery finds his hand. Adam’s hands are hardened by work. Ronan’s are unmarred, except for what his privilege allows him: slick of an expensive driving wheel, the grip of a switch knife. Ronan’s fingers tighten around his, folding over his knuckles. They stick out too much, like the spine of a baby bird, but Ronan grips them like they’re the most precious thing. Adam is still getting used to that.

“I do,” Adam says, again. “Really. But sometimes... it’s hard. To still remember, that...” His throat closes, but he forces the words out, because this was made so he and Ronan could talk, in a reality where neither of them like to, very often. “That I’m safe, with you.”

Ronan’s eyes flicker across his face, like he’s trying to read him. Adam feels like he can see almost his entire life reflected back in his sharp eyes. “Okay,” he says, finally.

“Just go slow,” Adam says. “Like we said we would.”

“Obviously,” Ronan says, but he squeezes Adam’s hand: carefully, tightly, like he’s something to lose.

* * *

The first time Ronan tries in front of people is in Monmouth, a few weeks later. It’s a heavy July, the heat hanging low and thick like a fog, and so Gansey has three different fans on. Two of them are dream-things; Blue complained about the energy waste, and Ronan likes to pretend that he doesn’t care about her as much as he does. The third is from Target. (Discount, 40%.) They all blow the stink through Gansey’s paper Henrietta, and everything gently rustles.

“Your turn,” Noah says to Blue, and hands her the dice.

“This is a stupid game,” Blue says. Adam thinks she’s only saying that because last round she landed on one of Gansey’s hotels and had to cough up half her bank. Gansey is the only one with enough patience to buy hotels. Adam likes to buy all the train stations. Ronan mainly aims to land on Free Parking. “It promotes consumerist capitalism and monopoly from the arrogance of rich people.”

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Ronan instigates. Adam rolls his eyes. He’s so transparent.

It works, though. “I’ll show you a sore loser,” Blue says savagely, and rolls the dice. Ten. She moves from one of Gansey’s hotels to another of Gansey’s hotels.

Politely, Gansey says, “I think that’s one of mine.”

“You think,” Blue leers, and lays down on the floor. Her hair is pulled out of her face because of the heat; from his vantage point, Adam can spot a few rogue clips at the top of her head where she tried to tame back her unruly bangs. “Let’s do something else.”

“Of all the things to do in one hundred and ten degrees,” Adam says.

Blue sneers at him, and he grins back at her, uncharacteristically happy. Gansey says, “Jane, I don’t mean to be pushy, but you owe me 200.”

Blue sulks, but she hands him over the money. Noah, currently in jail, gets his go skipped, and then it’s Gansey’s turn, who rolls, lands on an unpurchased property, and then thinks long and hard about the pros and cons of buying it, touching his organised piles of money with the tip of his finger, as if they will fill him with wisdom through osmosis. Adam leans back on his palms and tips his head back, feeling the sunlight from the window spill across his face. It’s on the edge of stiflingly hot, but Adam has lived in a trailer without AC for too many years for it to bother him anymore.

Lazily, he squints open an eye just in time to see Ronan say, “Jesus, _do_ something, Dick.”

Gansey ignores this. “What vibes are we getting from this, gang?” Gansey’s street-talk is as cripplingly terrible as it is endearing.

“We’re not helping you,” Blue says, at the same time as Noah says, “I say wait, save it for a hotel on Mayfair.”

“Smart,” Gansey says. “Ronan, your turn.”

“I quit,” Ronan says. “I’ll join Adam’s team.”

“Just because you’re losing,” Blue says.

“Strategy, maggot,” Ronan says, “you should consider it,” and Blue sneers at him too.

“I didn’t say you could join my team,” Adam says, amused.

“Does it look like I care what you say?” Ronan says, and then he shifts and rests his head in Adam’s lap, and Adam’s amusement dies a swift death. “I’ll be moral support.”

“I don’t think either of those words apply to you,” Adam says, even though his tongue suddenly feels too big for his mouth. They haven’t talked about Ronan touching Adam since that night, and out here, in the open, in the daylight, surrounded by their friends, it’s never felt so real. In the night time, during the witching hour, where nothing feels real, it’s easy: sometimes Ronan pulls things out of his head, sometimes there’s a girl with goat-hooves in the room next door, and sometimes Adam has an aversion to touch. But here, in the daylight, it’s not just an outline, but a real, tangible thing, now. Adam knows Ronan didn’t forget: he’s like an elephant, in that aspect. Ronan cares too much to forget. But he thought they’d address it at night again.

He hadn’t expected this, this unself-conscious, self-assured declaration. They’ve barely held hands in front of their friends.

Adam’s hand twitches above Ronan’s head, fingers flexing, and he spares a glance at his friends. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Maybe staring, maybe a look of disgust, discomfort: why are they doing that here? But no one has batted an eyelid; Gansey is elegantly organising his money into piles, Blue is still on the floor, and Noah is trying to filch from the bank to bail himself out of jail. He’s good at stealing from the bank: Adam thinks it’s a ghost thing.

They’re not paying attention to Adam and Ronan at all. Adam’s hand pauses in the air, and then hesitantly rests down on the top of Ronan’s head. His hair is growing out, a little: he looks like a toothbrush. The soft down at his nape has become soft with sweat, his skin is damp under the ring of his collar. He’s stubborn like that. Adam doesn’t doubt it’s a pride thing: it’s the same reason all of Blue’s numerous hairclips are entirely eyesoreish and unidentical. They’re both a lot more similar than they care to admit. Ronan hums when Adam’s hand make contact, so Adam feels braver, and gently runs the tips of his fingers across his scalp.

“If Ronan quits then it’s your turn, Adam,” Gansey says.

“Can we stop playing?” Blue says. “I can’t think about capitalism in this heat, I’ll get a rash.”

“We can’t stop until a winner is declared,” Gansey says, primly.

Noah upturns the board. Pieces skitter across the floor, careering into the paper Henrietta. Adam, the boot, ends up on the front step of the green grocers. Ronan, the dog, punctures a hole in Aglionby and sags the dorm building. “There,” he says. “I win.”

Gansey is appalled. “What? No you don’t!”

Noah brandishes his hand across his money. While no one was looking he managed to filch every last piece of paper money left in the bank without anyone noticing.

Hotly, Gansey says, “You stole that!” (Monopoly gets him riled.)

“You can’t prove that,” Noah says. “I have the most money, therefore I win.”

“You were in jail, that can’t possibly count,” Gansey starts, but then Blue reaches above her head and links one of her fingers in his belt-loops, and he lies down next to her. Adam can’t bring his eyes away from them. Gansey’s sandy hair is the same colour as the floorboards, Blue’s spiky hair spreads like an ink stain. She reaches her arms above her, stretching towards the ceiling, fingers splayed, and her arms sway, and Gansey laughs and hooks his index finger around hers in the air, and they just wait there, arms outstretched, connected at the hands, a king and his queen embalmed in their temple.

For them, it’s so easy.

But then again, he guesses not. They tucked their relationship into the earpiece of the 300 Fox Way landline and the front seats of the Pig because they felt like they had to. Gansey _died_ , and Blue was the one who did it. For a few heart-stopping minutes, the highway stretching out for miles in both directions, they had all thought that it would be his end.

Adam looks down at Ronan’s head in his lap. His eyes are closed. He’s not asleep, his face stops looking so pinched when he’s asleep; without opening his eyes, he says, “I can feel you staring, stop.” He’s always been uncanny with stuff like that. Or maybe it’s just intuition. Who wouldn’t stare at Ronan Lynch? He’s jagged and elegant and dangerous, with sharp eyes and a soft mouth, with claws around his neck and a raven on his shoulder.

He’s beautiful.

“Sorry,” Adam says, though he’s not. Because he can, he traces a finger down Ronan’s nose.

Ronan snips, “This isn’t fuckin’ A Star Is Born.”

But then he reaches up and takes Adam’s finger and links their hands together and rests them over his chest, and they’re both too sweaty and Adam’s wrist is bent at a weird angle but Adam still feels his ribcage fill with something almost like elation.

“I’m gonna gag,” Noah says, and disappears.

“Oh!” Blue says, from the floor, “the thimble is in Fox Way!”

* * *

“How did you know?” Adam says, later.

“I know everything,” Ronan says. And then: “Know what?”

“That it would be okay,” Adam says, “to.”

Ronan waits a generous amount of time, which for Ronan is around five seconds. Ronan has never been frivolous with his time. He is wound like a clock. “To what? Take a shit?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Use your words, nerd,” Ronan says. “Come help me with this haybale. I think Opal pissed on it.”

In the fragmented light of the shed he is mottled amber. He looks like an angry archangel, like the statues at St Agnes, beautiful and dangerous, pinched and explosive, a tinderbox. Adam helps him load the bale into one of the wheelbarrows, and their hands brush; Ronan pauses, twitches, his long fingers brush against the inside of Adam’s wrist. It feels accidental; Adam knows it’s not. They are at their most alive here, in the depths of Virginian fields, surrounded by traces of magic, Ronan, unidentifiable, pinned up in every colour around the house: the cows, the car, the girl with goat hoofs. Hot fingers against the place Adam’s pulse beats strongest. Adam is palest at his wrists, keeps them turned in, away from the sun when he works. Everything about him is warm but at his wrists he is white and green, like new plant shoots in spring.

When Ronan touches him there, he says, _we’re alive. We’re okay_.

And Adam knows.

Four hours later, in bed, Ronan says, apropos of nothing, “I just... had a feeling.”

Adam turns his head. “What?”

“Today. At Monmouth. I had a feeling.”

“And you were so sure?”

“I wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t want it,” Ronan says.

And Adam knows. Because Ronan has toed every line he has come across, will continue to, but he’s always been careful with Adam. Adam takes a deep breath, reaches out, touches Ronan’s leg, feels the corded muscle in his thigh. Ronan’s wearing boxer shorts: Adam tucks his hand under his thigh, feels his warmth. Feels safe.

“I know,” he says.

Ronan looks at him. He’s got eyes like sea glass. “Don’t be a fucking sap,” is all he says.

Adam grins, and closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> ik at this point noah is meant to be gone but in my heart is still around


End file.
